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Men of the Kingdom
Peter the Hermit
A STORY OF ENTHUSIASM
_By_
DANIEL A. GOODSELL
A Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM
PREFACE
Original material for a biography of Peter the Hermit either does not
exist in this country, or, if here, does not yield itself readily to
knowledge and use. The "Life of Peter the Hermit," by D'Outremant, and
another by André Thevet, on which Michaud draws heavily, seem beyond
reach, as are also the histories of the Crusades, by von Raumer and
Maunbourg.
On examining a number of English and American "Histories of the
Crusades," I found them to be largely abridgments or paraphrases of
Michaud's monumental work.
It is, then, from Michaud and Milman chiefly that the writer has drawn
the facts herein recorded, having often found it necessary to chasten
the too pronounced Roman sympathies of Michaud by the equally pronounced
Protestantism of Milman. To these authors I am so much indebted as to
call for the fullest acknowledgment. The Rev. Dr. J. A. Faulkner,
Professor in Drew Theological Seminary, has put me under great
obligations by permitting me to use Hagenmeyer's "Life of Peter,"
especially valuable to the early and late parts of Peter's life.
BROOKLINE, _June, 1906_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PETER THE HERMIT, 7
II. THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE, 25
III. THE MARCH AND THE BATTLE, 44
IV. THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM, 82
Peter the Hermit
CHAPTER I.
PETER THE HERMIT.
THE FOREGROUND.
The great movements called the Crusades followed the leading of
universal religious instincts.
[Sidenote: _The Cause of Pilgrimages_]
[Sidenote: _Belong to all Religions_]
[Sidenote: _The Impulse of To-day._]
[Sidenote: _Pilgrimages and Historic Memory_]
Wherever a great leader has been born, has taught, has suffered, died,
or been buried, the feet of his followers have been glad to stand. At
such spots religious emotions are revived, holy influences are believed
to be absorbed, and a sense of nearness to the prophets of God acquired.
Whatever the teacher wore, used, or even looked upon, became a treasure
through its relation to him. In India pilgrimages to holy shrines,
rivers, and cities have been works of merit, even from prehistoric
times. The same is true of China as to temples, tombs, springs, and
mountain summits. Devotees of later religions, like that of Mahomet,
have their Meccas, as the Roman Church has her Loretto and her Lourdes.
The murder of Thomas á Becket was followed by the Canterbury
pilgrimages, immortalized by Chaucer. "From the lowest Fetichism up to
Christianity itself this general and unconquerable propensity has either
been sanctioned by religion or sprung up out of it."[1] Humanity leans
more readily on the Incarnate Savior than on Him who was "before the
world was." To-day the devout Christian feels the impulse to walk where
the Master walked, to behold the sea which He stilled, to sit by the
well where He preached, to pray in the garden of His agony, and to stand
on the summit above which He shone. And if his faith can be assured as
to the site of Calvary, the great tragedy loses all historical dimness
and is made real, visible, and present, though its story be read through
penitent tears. The place suggests the man; the man suggests the Divine
Man; He seems nearer when we worship where an apostle said, "My Lord and
my God."
[Sidenote: _The East the Fountain of Religions_]
[Sidenote: _Influence of Magna Græcia_]
The East has always been the fountain of religions to the European mind.
To the westward flowed the stream of doctrines which sprang up in the
Orient. We are beginning to see that Greece came to many of her gods
through instruction from the Asiatic continent, and that her originality
in religion lay chiefly in her refinement of nature worship and in the
beautiful marble forms in which Greek genius enshrined her divinities.
From Greece the stream reached Italy in Magna Græcia, and later by the
adoption through Roman assimilation of the gods of the Greek Pantheon.
The worship of Isis and Osiris came from Egypt to Rome, and became an
influential cult there, as witness the abounding symbols of that worship
still preserved in the Capitoline Museum.
[Sidenote: _The Charm of Judea to Christians_]
To the Christian no land could be so full of religious suggestions,
remembrances, and associations as Judea. France, Spain, Italy, Britain
were no sooner Christianized in any degree than pilgrims began to set
out for the Jordan, for Bethlehem, for Jerusalem with its Gethsemane,
its Calvary, and its Holy Sepulcher. Those who were taught that blessing
came "by the work wrought," especially when the years prophesied a brief
space of life left, eagerly sought to wash sin away in Jordan or to die
near the hill of the atonement.
[Sidenote: _Greater Number of Pilgrims_]
[Sidenote: _Buildings by Constantine and Helena_]
When Christianity became imperial by alliance with the State, and
corrupt by the ascendency of Constantine in its Councils, the number of
pilgrims greatly increased. Ambitions as well as devotions drew men to
Palestine. Constantine had evoked Jerusalem again as a name and as a
city from the ruins of the preceding three centuries. The liberality of
Constantine and Helena had identified the holy places sufficiently for
the credulous faith of the time, and has decorated them with churches
and colonnades. Michaud says: "An obscure cavern had become a marble
temple paved with precious stones. To the east of the Holy Sepulcher
appeared the Church of the Resurrection, where the riches of Asia
mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome."[2]
[Sidenote: _Security in Pilgrimages_]
The attraction of such buildings, however, was not so great a stimulus
to pilgrimages as the security which the pilgrim might have, both on his
journey and after his arrival, through the extended and effective
authority of the Roman emperor. The pilgrim could now journey without
fighting his way, could be housed without secrecy after his arrival, and
could worship without stripes at any one of the many shrines which
attracted his piety.
[Sidenote: _Dangers of the Earlier Journeys_]
It is doubtful if any pilgrims traveled so far at first in such numbers
through unsympathetic and unfriendly people as those who went as
palmers before the settlement of the roads by Constantine or just
before the Crusades. During the stay of St. Jerome at Bethlehem, in the
fourth century, the pilgrims were so numerous that he speaks of them as
coming in crowds, and says that the praises of God could be heard there
in many languages.
[Sidenote: _Early Fathers and their Cautions_]
[Sidenote: _Warnings of St. Jerome_]
Some of the great leaders of the Church, Jerome himself with varying
note, were wise enough to point out the evils of these pilgrimages, and
to remind the faithful that the Christ might be honored by good deeds at
home. Gregory of Nyssa wrote: "The Lord has not said, 'Go to the Orient
and seek justice.' Travel even to the west and you shall receive
pardon." St. Augustine said in the first sermon on the words of the
Apostle Peter: "I am unwilling to consider a long journey. Where you
believe, there you arrive."[3] Jerome from Bethlehem itself writes,
"Heaven is equally open to Britain and Jerusalem." He could not have
advised against pilgrimages more strenuously if he had wished to keep
Bethlehem for himself and for the Roman ladies drawn thither by his
example.
[Sidenote: _Good Roads and Travelers' Homes_]
For several centuries the passion for the pilgrimage increased steadily.
Roads were indicated, resting places pointed out, and wealth sought to
buy salvation by building hospitals and providing for doles of bread and
wine to those who made the sacred journey. Charlemagne made their case a
tax on his subjects through whose bounds they passed. "Even in our
entire kingdom neither rich nor poor shall dare to deny hospitality to
the pilgrims.... On account of the love of God and the salvation of our
souls, no one shall deny them shelter, fire, or water."
[Sidenote: _Shelters in Jerusalem_]
In Jerusalem vast caravanseries were built for them, Gregory the Great
building there one of the largest of all shelters.
[Sidenote: _Washing Sins Away_]
The signs of the pilgrim--the staff, the wallet, and the
scallop-shell--were blessed by priest or bishop before departure, and
took on added sanctity, and even miracle-working power, if they had
reached actual use in the Holy Land. It was not long before an indulgent
Church guaranteed that bathing in Jordan should wash away all sin. And,
as the Holy Land must be rich in the bones of martyrs and in the relics
of Christ and His apostles, it was within the ambition of the pilgrims
to possess a hair of the Virgin, a thread from the seamless coat, a nail
which had pierced His hand, a splinter from the cross, or a thorn which
had torn His brow. All these were believed to possess powers of
healing, and their possession permanently increased the dignity of
families and the wealth of Churches.
[Sidenote: _Relics and Miracles_]
The demand for such relics from the Christian world was great and the
supply was greater. Traffic in these was enriched by the purchase of the
silks, spices, and other treasures of the East, and commercial greed
came to move men under the cover of the cross.
[Sidenote: _Chosroes Conquers Syria_]
The stream of pilgrimage was full until the reign of Heraclius. Then the
Persian king, Chosroes, carried his arms through Syria and Palestine to
Egypt. The fire-worshipers defiled the holy city by their authority and
their worship. They tainted and robbed the churches, and carried off
what was believed to be the cross of the crucifixion, which had been
guarded by the Church of the Resurrection.
[Sidenote: _Return of the Cross_]
The wailing of the Christian world over this loss strengthened the
courage of Heraclius through ten years of reverses, and aided in the
late but full victory which not only brought back to Jerusalem the
enslaved Christians but the Cross of Calvary, as the most glorious of
trophies. The emperor himself bore this barefooted to the summit of
Calvary, and at Constantinople received the congratulations of the
Christian world.
Jerusalem was soon, however, to feel the weight of a new and heavy hand.
[Sidenote: _Rise of Mahomet_]
[Sidenote: _Greek Empire Corrupt_]
In Arabia a religion arose with a singular power of advance, which it
retains to this day. The union of the spiritual with the material, of
the sensual with a fatalistic theology, made the followers of Mahomet
eager for heaven by way of the battle-field. The Jews had now no unity;
Christianity had become divided into sects cursing each other; the
Persian Empire had exhausted itself; the Greek Empire was wasted with
its own corruptions. The way was open for the stern, sober, and, in all
respects but one, self-denying followers of Mahomet. Until they learned
to navigate they swept the eastern and southern coasts of the
Mediterranean. They early overwhelmed Palestine. Becoming masters of
maritime peoples, they conquered even to Spain; were held at bay for a
while by Constantinople; came even under the walls of Vienna, and were
at length beaten back by Charles Martel.
[Sidenote: _Jerusalem Sacred to Mohammedans_]
[Sidenote: _Jerusalem Taken by Omar_]
Jerusalem was almost as sacred a city to the Mohammedans as to the
Christians. Their prophet had visited it, and had journeyed to heaven
from it. Attacked by the soldiers of Omar shortly after the death of the
prophet, the Christians endured the horrors of a siege for four months,
resisting armies which claimed the city as theirs by the promises of
God. Omar came to receive the keys of the exhausted city, and Christians
cried out in agony as the chief infidel defiled by his presence the Holy
Sepulcher. They were permitted to worship, but not openly to exhibit
their crosses and sacred books. Their conqueror erected a mosque on the
site of the temple. This was more than the breaking heart of the
Christian patriarch could bear. He died bewailing the sorrows and
desolation of the city of the Great King.
[Sidenote: _Omar Checks Persecution_]
While Omar lived the hand of persecution was in good measure stayed, but
worked in full vigor as soon as he was dead. Christians were certain
neither of their homes nor of their churches. Their taxes were increased
to the point of exhaustion. They could not mount a horse nor bear a
weapon. A leather girdle must always show their subjection. No Arabic
word must fall from their lips, nor could they speak the name of their
own Patriarch without permission.
[Sidenote: _Hardships Stimulate Pilgrimages_]
These hardships awakened the sympathy of the Christian world, and
stimulated many to go to the Holy Land that they then might be
"accounted worthy to suffer with Christ."
Arculphus and Antoninus, of Plaisance, reached sainthood by making this
journey and certifying to the Western Churches the persecutions of the
Christians in the Holy Land.
[Sidenote: _Haroun al Raschid Just_]
Yet truth compels the statement that the Mohammedans were not always
unjust or unkind. Intervals of peace came to cheer those who wept, and
the reign of Haroun al Raschid offered them the largest hope. The great
Charles was now great enough, even in Eastern eyes, to secure liberty
and peace to Christians in far-off Palestine, and was treated as an
equal through embassies and presents by the great Caliph.
Never could a monarch have received a more welcome present than did
Charlemagne when the Caliph sent him the keys of the Holy Sepulcher.
[Sidenote: _Christ Expected 1000 A. D._]
It is also to be remembered that prophecy had been interpreted to mean
that in the year 1000 A. D. Christ would appear and set up His
millennial kingdom. This greatly stimulated the pilgrimages to the Holy
Land, as it did all other phases of devotion. Thousands felt that it
would be well to be at the scene of the cross and of the resurrection
when Christ came with His angels. It were well they should be near where
He ascended, whether they were living or dead when He came.
[Sidenote: _Haroun Dead Persecution Follows_]
Persecutions followed the death of the great Caliph, particularly in
the sultanate of Egypt. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was destroyed.
Other Christian buildings shared the same fate. Then as now, the Jews
had to suffer from suspicions created by their voluntary segregation as
well as by their forced isolation. The Christians in France heard that
the French Jews had sent word to the Sultan Hakim that a great Christian
invasion of the Holy Land was intended. This led to a revenge, the
justice of which in any degree remains unsettled to this day.
[Sidenote: _Toll for Entering Jerusalem_]
Unexpected calm came to Palestine through the development of the
maritime powers of Italy, which could fall on Hakim's dominions at will.
The largest annoyance of the pilgrims for awhile was the enforced
payment of a toll for entering Jerusalem, established near this time by
the Mohammedan powers. In the cooler blood of historical inquiry to-day,
we can not wonder at a tax which failed at its greatest height to meet
the increased cost of government when thousands of pilgrims were added
to the population of Jerusalem and its environs. But it was often gladly
paid by those who could, and the gates of Jerusalem were opened by the
richer pilgrims for those to whom it was an impossible or severe
burden.
[Sidenote: _Christianity now Wealthy_]
Christianity had now attained a history of a thousand years. It had
climbed to stately thrones and to cathedrals. Princes of great names,
like Robert of Normandy, and bishops who were also secular princes made
the pilgrimage and returned to speak with authority on the attractions
of the holy places and on the shame of the infidel's domination.
[Sidenote: _Pilgrimage Guaranteed Pardon_]
In the shrewd management of the Church at this time, pilgrimages were
substituted for penances, and troublesome sinners were sent out of their
country on a pious mission which promised forgiveness if it could not
pledge reform. It at least secured a period of quiet to their families
and of security to the neighborhoods from which they came.
The Bollandist manuscripts afford many details of the pilgrim life at
Jerusalem which had, however, to be enjoyed by permission of the
infidel, always a bitter portion in the pilgrim's cup.
[Sidenote: _Round of Pilgrim Duties_]
On arrival they prepared themselves by fasting and prayer. Then, covered
by a mourning robe, they visited the Church of the Sepulcher. The robe
thus attained such sanctity that it was preserved until death and
enshrouded the owner at burial. They then visited, in turn, the sacred
spots in and adjacent to the city. This accomplished, they sought the
holy mountains of the Sermon, the Transfiguration, and Ascension. Then
they washed their sins away in Jordan, and tore off palm-leaves near
Jericho to attest on their homeward journey that the holy pilgrimage was
complete.
The tenth and eleventh centuries thus kept by the thousands of pilgrims
yearly, all Christian Europe became informed of the conditions which
obtained in the land where Christ suffered for the sins of men.
[Sidenote: _Services to Pilgrims_]
Slowly there grew up a devotion which was nearly equal to a secondary
religion. Service rendered to a pilgrim was almost the same as being a
pilgrim. Nor did the pilgrims fail to profit by the reverence they
inspired. Some of them paid their way by their prayers. There is record
of one who paid his fare for a voyage from Alexandria to Palestine with
a copy of the Evangelists.
On the St. Bernard, on Mt. Cenis, on the frontiers of Hungary, in Asia
Minor, as well as in Palestine, hospitals and hostelries were built by
the faithful as works of salvation.
[Sidenote: _Impure Accretions_]
No pious movement has ever long existed without drawing to itself some
of impure and selfish motive. The rich had no surer way of advertising
their generosity than by making the journey and aiding in the comfort
of their poorer brethren. Some made the pilgrimage as many times as
planet pilgrims now visit Europe. Yet to the credit of the pilgrim it
must be said that no act of violence is recorded against any one who
really made the whole journey. It is recorded of a Mussulman governor
that he said of such, "They are not away from home with bad intent, but
to keep their law."
[Sidenote: _Confusion of Moral Sense_]
Confusing to the moral sense as we possess it, and destructive of true
morality as we must hold it to be, we must further admit with
astonishment that pilgrimage was held to be a cure for the most dreadful
sin.
A Brittany lord who murdered his brother and his uncle was ordered to
make the journey twice with humiliating conditions, and returned, after
three years on Mount Sinai, to be received as a saint and to dignify a
monastery by his narrations and his residence.
[Sidenote: _A Journey Condones Murder_]
One journey was enough to free from further penalty a Roman prefect who
had dragged a pope from his altar. Foulque-Nerra, Count of Anjou,
pursued by the ghosts of those he had murdered, sought to quiet them
through three unavailing journeys.
For such reasons and for many others, some of which can hardly be
brought within religious motives, thousands made the journey. Three
thousand, beginning with the Bishop of Cambrai, were nearly all starved
or murdered in Bulgaria, and the few who went on as far as Laodicea
turned back or died there, while their leader went back to his diocese.
[Sidenote: _Bloody Welcome in Bulgaria_]
[Sidenote: _Three Thousand Killed_]
One more band, or army rather, of ten thousand started ten years later
with the Archbishop of Mayence and the Bishops of Spires, Cologne,
Bamberg, and Utrecht. They were almost in sight of Jerusalem when the
Bedouins besieged and captured them. Saved from death by a neighboring
Emir, they followed the news of their tribulations to Jerusalem, where
they were received with joy. They lost during the whole journey three
thousand of their number, and went back to fire Europe with accounts of
their impressions, their perils, and their undeserved dangers.
[Sidenote: _Rejoicing in Martyrdom_]
[Sidenote: _Fanaticism of Turks_]
[Sidenote: _Degenerate Greeks_]
As the tolerance of the earlier caliphs was succeeded by the fanaticism
of the Turks, the Christians of Jerusalem ceased to be treated with any
other consideration than that accorded to despised slaves. Pilgrims were
no longer guests, but intruders. No persecution, however, stopped the
flow of pilgrims. The harder the way, the greater the cost, the greater
the merit. The pilgrim might, under these later conditions, easily
become a martyr. The martyr's crown was sure, by the faith of the times,
to become a heavenly crown. Few now survived the journey. These often
came back starved, cut, and mutilated. Their appearance and the great
gaps in the ranks of those who returned, kindled a smoldering fire under
all Europe. Such had been the pre-eminence of Constantinople and the
Greek Empire that if the Greeks had retained their former quality, the
Turks might have been driven back by those who sat on that famous
throne. But when the corruption of decay was attacked by the vigor of an
almost savage state, there could be but one result.
[Sidenote: _Greeks Truculent_]
Among the Greeks the lowest qualities and the basest acts found
justification under the name of policy. Courage in battle was supplanted
by the shield and mechanism of bodily safety. They killed the men who
tried to rouse them. They had wasted all their inheritance but great
memories, and had acquired a truculent and factious spirit. While they
were nearing the utter decay of their influence the infant West was
found to have grown until all that was noble in character and all that
was true in Christianity, all which could respond in courage and
self-sacrifice to the call of Jerusalem for deliverance, was to be
found among those whom the Greeks had held to be Barbarians.
[Sidenote: _Papal Ambition_]
[Sidenote: Greatness of Gregory]
The Roman Curia, from its first date of political influence, had never
ceased to enhance its authority by the use of the secular arm when it
had none of its own, or by its own secular arm when it could command
one. The disturbed conditions in the East, together with the decay of
Greek influence and the cowardice and helplessness of the Byzantine
emperors, had led Michael Ducas to appeal to Pope Gregory for help. The
prize offered Gregory was the submission of the Greek to the Roman
Church and the removal of all barriers. From the standpoint of ability,
Gregory well deserves the title "Great." He seems as great in statecraft
as in executive ability. The hope of being a universal pope led him to
promise aid. He urged the faithful to take up arms against the
Mussulmans, and promised to lead them himself. His letters were full of
the loftiest ideas. Fifty thousand agreed to follow his lead. But he
found the management of Europe more to his taste and perhaps to his
need.
The decay of Byzantine power was wisely used for the development of
pontifical authority and the spread of the Latin Church. And, again, the
Eternal City through its popes, and particularly through Gregory,
became the ruler of the world. Gregory summoned all monarchs to derive
their authority and their enthronement from him, and endeavored to make
laws for every country in which his Church had place. Resisted by some
monarchs, his influence widened nevertheless, and while he forgot his
pledge to deliver Jerusalem, he prepared the way for a final unity of
action which he could not secure in his own lifetime.
In the pontificate of his successor, mingled religious and commercial
motives led to a movement against the Saracens, which, while never
numbered among the Crusades, almost deserved that name. The acquisition
of maritime power by the Saracens had led to interference with Italian
commerce.
[Sidenote: _"Christian" Butchery_]
Promising remission of sins to all who fought, Victor besought
Christians to take up arms. Christians crossed to Africa and professed
to have slain a hundred thousand Saracens; certainly did decorate
Italian churches with the spoils of victory, and made a Moorish king pay
tribute to the pope.
What kings, emperors, and popes could not do, a pilgrim accomplished. We
pass from the Foreground to the Figure.